Friday, May 22, 2015

Auschwitz SS Men Confessing on Tape: Victor Capesius

The confessions of former Auschwitz SS men towards journalists and researchers (i.e. beyond criminal investigations and trials) are powerful evidence for the reality of mass extermination at this site. Each of them will be presented in a separate posting, starting with the former SS doctor Victor Capesius.

Victor Capesius and his wife were interviewed in 1978 by writer Dieter Schlesak at Capesius' pharmarcy and home in Göppingen, Germany. Extracts of the interviews were previously published in 2005 in Schlesak's book Zeugen an der Grenzen unserer Vorstellung, p. 167 - 182. The following passages, in which Capesius confirmed the practise of mass killing Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, were transcribed from the audio recording:

"In January 1945 we already fled [from Auschwitz]. And on 30 September, so on 1 October, 2490 people arrive from Theresienstadt [Schlesak: And all of these were murdered?] No, 250 men and 250 women were taken out and 1499 were gassed immediately. And those 500 were not tatooed, but brought to the Mexico depot. Mexico was called a wild camp, from which labour force was sent to the Reich."

"But all of this happened in the last year, because one could not handle the returning flood. The admission of Auschwitz could not swallow 150,000 or 300,000 people from Hungary within one month [Schlesak: 400,000 I believe were] yeah but 200,000 or 250,000 went into the gas immediately. They didn't get something to eat."

(Victor Capesius towards Dieter Schlesak, my translation; thanks to Werner Renz for providing the audio recording and to Dieter Schlesak for his permission to publish it)